The transplanting of plants and/or seedlings from a greenhouse, nursery bed, or other growing locations into the ground is often an operation that is performed, in order to improve the efficiency of harvesting. The advantages to transplanting plants/seedlings into a field or a soil may be seen as an extension a growing season by starting the growing plants indoors before outdoor conditions are favourable. It is possible to protect young plants from diseases and pests and avoid germination problems by planting seedlings instead of direct seeding.
The operation of manual transplanting has been done for a long time and may be seen as a very time consuming process, as the plants have to be planted by hand into the soil, and the time for each transplant is very high. Thus, in professional agriculture operations the transplanting is often done by apparatuses that are capable of preparing the soil, as well as assisting in positioning the plants in the correct positions. Such transplanters may be seen as e.g. a rotational transplanter, where the apparatus prepares the ground in a single row, while the seedlings or plants are manually introduced into a rotating magazine so that the apparatus can position the plants in the soil, before the next plant is introduced into the ground.
The problem with semi-automatic single row transplanters is that it is very time consuming to transplant an entire field of crops, as the speed of transplantation is dependent on the speed of the operator, and only one row can be worked on at a time. Thus, there is a need for quicker method of transplanting seedlings/plants.
AU 2007100035 introduces a transplanting apparatus for high density planting of seedlings into a substantially flat, smooth bed in several rows, where each row is provided with a seedling drop tube, blades that extend laterally below a skid plate for cutting a furrow for each row, and having means for holding and discharging a seedling delivered from the drop tube in a position for planting in the furrow. This apparatus is capable of transplanting more seedlings at a time, meaning that a higher number of seedlings are introduced into the ground in a transverse direction.
However, a problem with such an apparatus is that the speed of introduction of seedlings in the direction of planting, i.e. along the row, is limited, due to mechanical limitations as to the fact that the blades cannot be dragged in the ground at highs speeds, due to high forces and impacts the ground would transmit into the blades. Furthermore, the furrows are cut into the ground by a the wedge shaped blades, which means that the material removed from the furrows that are cut must be moved out of the furrow, which causes a high mechanical stress on the blades.
Therefore, there is a need for a transplanting apparatus that is capable of transplanting seedling into the ground at a high speed, at high consistency, in order to minimize the amount of time used for each seedling in a row, so that the efficiency of the transplant operation is optimized. The consistency of the transplant operation means that it is possible to optimize the use of the soil of a field for the growth of plants, in order to ensure that each plant has the correct area of soil in order to grow in an efficient manner.